Church of God in Christ

Church Of God In Christ
The official seal of the COGIC features a shaft of wheat representing the members of the COGIC. The rope that holds the shaft together represents Charles Harrison Mason, COGIC's founding father. The rain in the background represents the Latter Rain revivals that gave birth to the Pentecostal movement.
Classification	Protestant
Orientation	Pentecostal
Polity	Episcopal-Presbyterian polity
Region	Worldwide
Headquarters	Mason Temple Memphis, Tennessee
Founder	Charles Harrison Mason
Origin	1897 (founded) 1907 (incorporated) Memphis, Tennessee
Separations	Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A. (separated 1907), General Council of the Assemblies of God (separated 1914), Church of God in Christ, International (separated 1969)
Members	Over 6 million

The Church Of God in Christ (COGIC) is a Pentecostal-Holiness Christian denomination with a predominantly African-American membership. The denomination reports having more than 12,000 churches and over 6.5 million members in the United States. The National Council of Churches ranks it as the fifth largest Christian denomination in the U.S.

Internationally, COGIC can be found in more than 83 nations. Its worldwide membership is estimated to be between six and eight million, composing more than 25,000 congregations throughout the world.

The Church of God in Christ was formed in 1897 by a group of disfellowshiped Baptists, most notably Charles Price Jones (1865–1949) and Charles Harrison Mason (1864–1961). In the 1890s, C.P. Jones and C.H. Mason were licensed Baptist ministers in Mississippi who taught a Wesleyan doctrine of Christian perfection or Entire Sanctification as a second work of grace to their Baptist congregations. C.H. Mason was influenced by the testimony of the African-American Methodist evangelist Amanda Berry Smith, one of the most widely respected African-American holiness evangelists of the nineteenth century. Her life story led many African-Americans into the holiness movement, including C.H. Mason who testified to receiving Entire Sanctification after reading her autobiography.

In June 1898, C.P. Jones held a Holiness convention at Mt. Helm Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi, attended by C.H. Mason and others from several states. Protestant doctrinal debates about Calvinism and Wesleyan Perfectionism impacted how even local African-American Baptist pastors responded to new Christian movements at the time. Some of these African-American Baptist pastors in local Southern areas such as Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas viewed C.P. Jones and C.H. Mason as controversial. The leadership of the Mississippi State Convention of the National Baptist Convention intervened and expelled C.P. Jones, C.H. Mason, and others who embraced the Wesleyan teaching of Entire Sanctification. In 1897 after being expelled from preaching in local Baptist churches under the Mississippi State Convention, Elder Mason founded the St. Paul Church in Lexington, Mississippi, the first COGIC church.